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Yorkshire employment recovery among the strongest in depressed UK jobs landscape as London outperforms all regions

Employment rates remain well below their pre-recession levels in many parts of the UK despite increasing economic confidence, new analysis by the Resolution Foundation has found.

The joint strongest performer outside London is Yorkshire, which along with the North West, is the region closest to be closing its job gap with an employment rate only a little over 1% down on 2008 (before the main impact of the recession), when levels stood at 58.6%. This represents a gap of 47,000 workers.

In sharp contrast to the region’s apparent bounce back, other parts of the country - the South East, the South West, Scotland and the East Midlands – have seen the employment rate falling by more than 2.5% on average since 2008.

The hardest hit area has been the South East (excluding London) where 61% of the adult population is now in work, down from 64% in early 2008. This is closely followed by the South West, which has seen a 2.7% drop to 59% and Scotland and the East Midlands, where the employment rate has dipped 2.6% to 59% and 58% respectively.

The lowest overall employment is in the North East, where less than 54% of the working-age population is employed – down 2% since 2008.

Nationally, this adds up to a gap of 963,000 – or the number of jobs that need to be created to make up the ground lost over the years of recession. While the number of people in work has seen a rise over recent months, the good news is tempered by the fact that the country’s adult population has risen at the same time (by 1.8 million) so that the proportion of people in work has actually fallen.

And new labour market statistics to be released on Wednesday could show the size of the national jobs gap widen to nearly a million if the trend over recent months, including a rise of 113,000 between March and July, continues.

Alex Hurrell, senior analyst at the Resolution Foundation, said: “Economic confidence seems to be on the rise in the UK and is partly down to a welcome increase in the overall numbers of people in work. However this hasn’t matched the rate of the increase in the adult population and the proportion of employed people aged 16 and over has fallen everywhere – a less positive view of labour market conditions.

“A clear trend is that London is outperforming the rest of the country, with the capital posting a difference of under 1% between now and its 2008 level of 62%, and this is especially noticeable when you compare it to the rest of the South East.

“Unfortunately these figures show that the jobs recovery continues to be very difficult in every other part of the UK and that there is a long way to go before the hole knocked in employment during the recession is repaired.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by David Gatehouse .